An easy to use guitar software package that provides a fresh approach to practising and composing guitar music. www.GuitarSharp.com

A better way of importing

The new version of GuitarSharp has an improved way of importing files from the web. Previously this was a little bit cumbersome so we have streamlined this process a lot now. This feature is called CloudImport and can be access from the new Welcome screen shown at startup, or from the File menu.

The CloudImport feature works a little like Google does. You type in some details of the song you are wanting, and it will search some popular guitarists web sites to see whether they offer any matching songs. You can then double-click on the returned results to be directed to the specific web site. This allows the owning web site to still benefit from your traffic (and advertising revenues too), but also makes the importing of the offered files into GuitarSharp a more automated process.

Lets look at an example then. We want to learn to play Sweet Child O’ Mine and so we want to easily import this song into GuitarSharp. Using the CloudImport screen, we can enter a brief description of the song and click Search:

We are returned a list of matches that were found and the name of the website that hosts the matching songs. Once we have decided which one in the search results we would like to look at further, we can double-click on the item to pick it.

Each website has their own specific instructions on how to download the file. For the excellent UltimateGuitar website, a message like this will be shown indicating that from the UltimateGuitar website you should click their DownloadGuitarProTab button to get the file onto your computer:

Once you have downloaded a file a few times from a website, these steps will become second nature and you can just dismiss this prompt when it is displayed.

You will now be directed off to the relevant website for you to select your file, but GuitarSharp will now be showing this screen to complete the import process:

This screen is where the main improvements to the import process live. Previously you would have to manually locate the downloaded file yourself and then import it into GuitarSharp. But this screen will now actively monitor for files being downloaded onto your computer and when it detects a matching one, it will trigger an auto import. This means your downloaded file will automatically get loaded into GuitarSharp once the website’s download has completed. This makes things so much smoother.

But what if your browser doesn’t download files to the usual locations, or you decide to download your file to a folder of your choice? Well, we’ve tried to handle that too and make it easier. In these situations you can drag and drop the downloaded file from WindowsExplorer onto the shaded area shown in the screen and that will trigger the auto import of the file. Alternatively, you can still use the good old fashioned Browse button to go and find the file yourself if you prefer.

If you want to know where your browser has downloaded your files to, most browsers will allow you to right click on the file downloaded which is shown at the bottom of your browser’s screen. There will be an option entitled something similar to ShowInFolder, which when clicked on will open a WindowsExplorer to this location where you can then drag and drop the file from.